The Land is Not for Sale!

Mexican media have reported that plans for La Parota Dam have been placed on hold until 2018. The communities resisting the dam have responded that they will maintain their struggle until the dam is canceled outright.

Boston Rising Tide activists dropped a 25-foot banner from the city’s Environmental Protection Agency on June 29, reading, “Mountain Top Removal Kills Communities: EPA No New Permits. MountainJustice.org.”

There are more than 150 permits pending for new mountaintop removal coal mines in West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky.

mountaintop removal banner

International Rivers has just published two good articles analyzing the recent massive push for new dams coming out of Chile and the Amazon. They make good reading for anyone wanting to follow these issues.

Fuck Dams!

The President of Honduras has been kidnapped by the military, in apparent collusion with the conservative Congress and Supreme Court. The coup occurred on the same day as a scheduled non-binding referendum on whether the people of El Salvador wanted a new constitution.

Zelaya was awakened by armed soldiers in the middle of the night and hustled off to Costa Rica. Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas was also abducted by security forces, and the ambassadors of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua were apparently beaten when they tried to interfere. Rodas is still missing.

Although most media outlets are reporting that the conflict between President Manuel Zelaya and the Congress/Court centered on Zelaya’s proposal that a new Constitution allow presidents to run for a second term, it seems much more like a power grab by a right-wing elite threatened by Zelaya’s left-leaning policies.

“Zelaya took a substantial turn from traditional Honduran politics by moving dramatically to the left,” said analyst Heather Berkman.

The current Constitution was written during the Reagan era of US-sponsored dirty wars in Central America.

Although the United States has now joined the rest of the international community in condemning the coup, it was one of the last nations to do so.

An estimated 25,000 protesters took to the streets Sunday demanding the return of Zelaya and attempting to carry out the referendum in spite of police and military violence. The government has imposed a curfew and cut off power and telephone service to nearly the entire capital city.

Supporter of Ousted Honduran President June 28 2009

Thirty-one people were arrested at a civil disobedience action against mountaintop removal coal mining on June 23, including actress Daryl Hannah and climate scientist James Hansen. The protesters had blocked traffic outside a West Virginia coal plant after plans to enter were thwarted by a large gathering of pro-coal counter-demonstrators. One counter-demonstrator attacked one of the protesters and punched her in the face.

A coal plant

The governments of Chile and Argentina are actively pursuing plans to build a Trans-Andean Rail tunnel to connect the Pacific and Atlantic ports of the respective countries. When completed, the rail line is expected to increase trade between the countries tenfold.

The current rail line between the countries is shut down for an average 45 days per year due to weather and technical problems.

a coal train

Companies involved include Argentinian firms Corporación América (CASA) and José Cartellone Construcciones Civiles, Chilean group Urenda’s Empresas Navieras, Spanish group Comsa, Italian consultancy Geodata, Austrian engineering firm Geoconsult and Brazilian company Odebrecht.

The project is currently in study phase.

Anti-mining organizer Marcelo Rivera has been missing since June 18, community members in San Isidro, El Salvador have reported. Rivera is a leader of the movement against a Pacific Rim gold mine near his community, representative of the community organization Amigos De San Isidro Cabañas and member of the community’s Board of Directors for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) party.

Community members have begun staging protests demanding that the government act

Political murders and disappearances have been on the rise in El Salvador, an enduring legacy of violence from the country’s civil war.

If you have any information, please contact ASIC immediately at asic.org@gmail.com.

UPDATE (June 28 2009): Pacific Rim has been exploring for gold in the El Dorado mine located in Cabañas and is currently suing El Salvador under the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) because the government has refused to grant the company permits to begin gold mining extraction.

Open Pit Mine in Panama

A group of Mayan Mam villagers torched the equipment of a company attempting to set up a mine on their land without permission on June 12. Exploradora de Guatemala, a subsidiary of the Canadian company Goldcorp, had been pressuring 20 families in the San Miguel Ixztahuacan municipality to sell their land, but the villagers had consistently refused. When the company began moving mining equipment onto their land anyway, the villagers demanded its removal.

The company promised to remove all equipment by June 10, then failed to do so. It promised again to remove the equipment by June 12, even as it requested police and army assistance — receiving 8 police units (2 of them anti-riot) and 4 vehicles full of soldiers.

On June 12, seeing that the company was not going to remove the equipment, villagers set fire to an exploration drill rig and pickup truck, while police and soldiers stood by and watched.

Unfortunately, due to company pressure, the police filed charges against 7 villagers for the action on June 19.

random burned yellow pickup

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (a division of the Organization of American States) has ordered Panama to immediately halt all action on three dams planned for the Changuinola River. The dams have been threatening indigenous Ngobe and Naso communities, as well as the World Heritage Site of La Amistad Biosphere Reserve.

The Chan-75 Dam was already under construction by the Panamanian government and subsidiary of the U.S.-based AES corporation.

The injunction is only preliminary, so that indigenous communities can be protected from further harm until the Commission comes to a final decision on their petition to have the dams canceled outright. The  Commission has given the Panamanian government 20 days to report on what action it is taking to comply with the order.

Work on the Chan-75 Dam began two years ago with the bulldozing of farms and houses. Indigenous protests have repeatedly been met with beatings, arrests and even paramilitary attacks.

Anti-Bonyic signs in Naso territory

The Department of Transportation has given out $5.2 million in grants to promote the use of new technology in bridge construction and repair. Bridges are considered a critical weak point of transportation infrastructure, as was demonstrated in August 2007 when a bridge in Minneapolis collapsed due to aging gusset plates.

A list of the bridges receiving the grants can be found here.

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